


Earth to Space

by daretogobeyondtheunknown



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daretogobeyondtheunknown/pseuds/daretogobeyondtheunknown
Summary: Ever since Kara landed in her life, Alex felt an awful lot like Earth in the grand scheme of Space: insignificant and hardly worth much.





	1. I'm Lost Somewhere Between

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, this is a re-posting of a piece I have done. You may find my original piece over on my blog: http://daretogobeyondtheunknown.tumblr.com/
> 
> Thank you to xavacid for your hard work on originally bringing my work to this platform, you are incredible.

“Kara, this is your fifth pair of laces,” Alex huffed as she relaced the white sneakers for what felt like the millionth time that week.

“I am sorry, Alexandra Danvers,” apologized Kara. Her stance was rigid - awkward beside Alex’s stooping shoulders and blasé attitude.

“Alex,” Alex corrected, setting down the newly laced shoes, “Sit.”

Kara scrambled forward.

She felt clumsy, unaccustomed to the way her limbs moved under Earth’s yellow sun. Once simple tasks felt behemoth and in a world with sounds, sights and nuances she didn't quite understand, Kara felt very alone.

“You have to tie it like this.”

Kara watched as Alex looped the laces: over, under, something about a bunny's ear.

“And don't pull so hard, ‘kay? Just a light tug. Your laces aren't made of steel.”

Head bobbing up and down, Kara watched Alex recede: always there but whenever Kara tried to follow, she was always just out of reach. Like a shadow.

A light tap, barely noticeable, drew Kara from her thoughts.

“Earth to Space, come in.”

Kara cocked her head.

She had heard the reference before. Alex had thought it extremely humorous. To Kara it seemed highly inaccurate. She was, after all, not the entirety of space - a system which encompassed Earth - and Alex was certainly not a planet.

And yet, it made Kara’s heart leap: the way the edges of Alex's lips curled upward, the way her eyes gleamed and - if Rao had blessed Kara - the way Alex laughed.

“Space reporting,” Kara repeated the words Alex had once told her.

It felt awkward and wrong to lie over such trivial matters. But the way Alex bent over, laughing whole heartedly until she could laugh no more, made Kara wonder if all deceits were truly harmful.

Her mother had said it was poor practice to lie and deceive but the small lie seemed to bring so much joy to the normally stoic child of the Danvers.

It was in moments like these, when Kara felt most conflicted. She wished her mother had not died and her planet had not been destroyed. Perhaps then, Kara might finally have the answers to the questions that Earth had created like a plague within her.

“Come on, Space.”

Kara felt her body shift to the right. Alex had shifted her weight against her, throwing her centre off ever so. Like what Kara had learned gravity did to those on Earth.

“It's just a shoe lace. The world won't end if you accidentally break another one. Remember: light tug.”

“Light tug,” reiterated Kara more to appease Alex then commit the directive to memory.

“Who knows, maybe if you break another pair, my mom will get you one of those Velcro shoes. I hear they're all the rage.”

Kara failed to understand why anger was something Alex would praised but again Alex smiled and Kara felt her step falter.

In silence, Kara prayed to Rao.

“You okay there, Space?”

“Most excellent.” 

Such little lies. 

It made Kara’s stomach churn and her breath falter.

And yet those tiny lies exposed a side in Alex, Kara found herself rarely privileged to see. Like the young Danvers had bottled up the joy that lingered within and on occasion, allowed the lid to slip. Just ever so.

Scuffing the toe of her shoe against the dirt, a cloud of dust left in her wake, Kara wondered: what was truth; what was lie; and where did the line draw for omissible.

As it always did, the silent sky never answered.  


	2. Don't Forget to Breathe

“What is it like? Up there.”

“It’s cold. Like if someone threw you in a tub of ice water. You can’t breath… But it’s beautiful,” admitted Kara in wonder.

“How is that beautiful?” Alex asked skeptically. Like the notion of cold, breathless and beautiful hardly belonged together.

“There are no city lights, no human made noise. It’s just you and the vastness of space.”

“But you can’t breathe,” retorted Alex.

“No, but I could see the stars; clear and unobstructed,” Kara recalled, arms sweeping above her and toward the night sky, “And for once, I felt  _normal_. Human.”

“Was it worth it?”

“That… That isn’t fair,” stammered Kara. Her tongue caught awkwardly and the words she had perfected felt foreign.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

They had been here. Run these lines. Played these games.

“I don’t.” The shrug seemed casual, careless.

“You do. And it hurts,” Kara admitted, curling into herself ever so slightly. Like the world felt cold and suddenly Kara was freezing.

Kara never felt cold.

“I’m sorry.”

It was the lie that rolled easy, like a rock falls to Earth, caught by gravity.

“No you’re not.”

“I could pretend.”

“Please don’t.”

“Why not? You’re earthbound, Space. Stuck with me in the muck of it. Noise, super strength and all. But you’d rather die - cold and alone and suffocating - all for the vastness of space. Did I get any of that wrong?”

“Alex, please-”

“I get it,” huffed Alex as she rose, dusting the dirt from the back of her pants, “Earth is lame. No one good enough here. Whatever.”

“Alex,” pleaded Kara to the empty space now beside her.

They’d had these words before, a mixture of emotions Kara couldn’t place.

Alex always left.


	3. Hold Me While I Tremble

“It’s just a headache, Kara,” Alex said as she swatted away the extended hand, “Stop fussing.”

Kara frowned and recoiled.

“You’re hovering,” Alex groaned.

If moving wouldn’t bring with it a wave of nausea and a fresh rush of searing throbs, Alex would have grabbed the cushion resting against her ankle and hurtled at the overly worried Kryptonian.

“My feet are on the floor, Alexandra Danvers.”

It was still so literal, the interactions between them. And more often than not, when the patience wore thin, Alex would toss her arms high in defeat and turn tide. 

“Pass the bucket.”

“Why?” Kara asked as she reached for the plastic object.

Rolling her eyes, Alex tore the bucket from Kara’s hands with greed, “So I can throw up in it, Space. Human thing,” was all Alex managed before the small contents of her stomach splashed into the bucket. Semi-graceful, she thought, even if the bile still burned the back of her throat and into her nasal cavity.

“Are you sure you are alright? Should I call Eliza?”

Heaving the last morsel of bile that could possibly exist in her body, Alex afforded Kara with her best glare possible, “Fu-” the intent was lost with the next heave and Alex cursed anything and everything.

“Space, chill,” Alex said with a shiver, “Just water and a blanket,” setting down the bucket, Alex attempted a shrug, “I highly doubt… She’s got better things to do than see her biological child sick.”

Water and blanket in hand, Kara blinked, “What do you mean? You are ill. You need attention. What could be more important?”

Rinsing her mouth, Alex grimaced, “Anything. Everything,” the fussing hands returned however Alex had little strength left to fight with, “Don’t pretend you don’t see it, Space. The woman looks at me like I’m her possession depreciating in value daily. Me being sick would just make my value drop even more.”

Kara did not speak, a sign Alex had learned long ago to be silent affirmation. Kara might have struggled with English idioms and cultural nuances but it was hard to not see the blatant  _gap_ that existed between Eliza and Alex Danvers.

“I do not believe your value is any less,” Kara offered moments later, tucking a small stuffed animal Alex hadn’t seen in years beside her head, “I love Earth and I wish it prosperity and happiness. You are worthy of such, Alex.”


	4. Don’t Forget I Left You

Her face remained stoic, the hallmark of indifference. Save the whitening of her knuckles, as Alex gripped the cutlery with more than necessary force, everything seemed ordinary.

“Honestly, Alexandra, I just don’t understand,” Eliza stated offhandedly, her disapproval layered thick like unmanaged grime atop a stove hood, “You had so much potential, and what do you do with it? You’re squandering it in this dead end city. Why couldn’t you be more like Kara-”

It was the comparison Alex loathed above all.

The disappointed stares and backhanded comments felt numbingly normal. Alex heard them no different than she had learned to hear the vocal media critics or raving opinionated bravados of the vocal society.  

Since she could recall, Alex had always been a few sandwiches short of a picnic in her mother’s eyes. It was as though her very birth was all levels of inadequate but maybe with enough poking, enough prodding, enough  _something_ , Alex would finally become the porcelain perfection her mother had always wanted her to be.

Time had weathered her skin to become tough and near impenetrable. The death of her father became the sealing glue, the final proverbial wall Alex erected to merely exist in the presence of the woman who had birthed her.

But Kara, somewhere in the mix of it all, had become the apple to Eliza’s eye. She was the one who had  _lost everything_  and in return, Eliza wanted to  _give_ her everything, Alex included. As if Alex was some object to be gifted, a mere tool passed from one set of hands to the next.

Kara was the infinitive vastness of Space - beautiful and wondrous and full of every form of life - while Alex truly became Earth - a speck in the existence of reality, one world of many, common, average, disposable.

“I don’t know why I even bother-”

The notion rooted deep, buried like an incurable disease, slowly killing her from the inside out. Or maybe, Alex mused, gaze focused just over her mother’s shoulder, it was like humanity:  _the parasite to Earth_ , what with the way it festered in the very fibers of her being.

Part of Alex despised Kara - the Kryptonian who had lost everything - for how she gained the everything Alex never would.

The other part clung to Kara as though she truly were space and Earth without Space could not exist.

Slamming against the glass front doors and into the cold autumn air, Alex took small pleasure at the measureable wince that crossed her mother’s features.

“Well as grand as this has been, I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than waste your time with your disappointment of a daughter,” Alex timed the barrage with the arrival of the cab she knew her mother would not turn away.

It was the same every year, like clockwork. Change the city, change the job, change the anything, and Eliza Danvers would always find a way to beat the same dead horse. 

“Can’t wait to do this again next year. Same place same time. I’ll bring the eternal disappointment,” chirped Alex with false jubilance.

Shutting the cab door on the protests of her mother, tapping the cab to usher it off, Alex waved. It wasn’t filled with relief or a growing sense of excitement. No, long ago, Alex had let go of all of that. 

Walking back up the dingy stairs - a few creaking a tad too ominously - to the peeling shades of paint on her door, Alex exhaled heavily.

And yet, the past few visits had left Alex with a void, a void that came in the form of an overly curious, overly excitable, puppy dog like Kryptonian.  _Space_.

Collapsing into the old mattress - wedged back in the corner of her room, frameless and pitiful - Alex stared at the only framed photo she owned.

It was her and Kara sprawled starfish on the beach, the white froth of the waves licking their toes. Alex was eighteen, sun kissed and obsessed with the ocean. Kara always humoured her - terrified of the deep blue unknown and its incomprehensible vastness.

It figured that Space would be terrified of something as minute as the ocean.

In that moment, surrounded by the seeing eyes of all, Alex allowed herself to merely exist. She could remember the way the sand tickled her skin, the water cooled her toes and Kara’s fingers laced with hers.

For the first time there was no bitterness, no resentment, no remorse.

The constant comparison had molded her into a beast - hollowed and unrelenting - and it fed her like a poison. It built in her everything Alex knew Earth  _shouldn’t_ be.

And so, not a month later, she left. And unlike so many times before, Alex never turned back. 


End file.
